1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to testers for testing the performance of a suspension system of wheeled motor vehicles, and more particularly to a compliance tester which can test the flexibility of a suspension system including a bush.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For testing the flexibility of a suspension system including a bush, a so-called "chassis static characteristic tester" has been widely used. In the test, the vehicle is mounted on the tester, and the wheel alignment is measured while producing bounding condition, rebounding condition, rolling condition and the like by the tester. By analyzing the wheel alignment thus measured, the flexibility of the suspension system including the bush is derived.
However, due to its inherent construction, the above-mentioned conventional tester has the following drawbacks.
(1) The measurement is limited to the wheel alignment effected under a static and specific condition. Thus, even if the bush of the suspension system has been deteriorated to a certain level, the deterioration of the bush can not be found out in case wherein the bush deterioration fails to exert a marked influence upon the result of the static measurement of the wheel alignment.
(2) The tester is large in size and requires a specified power unit (viz., hydraulic power unit, etc.,), which results in greater assembling space and greater cost.
For the reasons as mentioned above, the user of such chassis static characteristic tester has been limited to only car makers and the like. That is, hitherto, such large and high cost tester has not been commonly used in car dealers and service factories. In fact, sometimes, the replacement of a deteriorated bush with a new one has been made by the car mechanic by using simple tools. Thus, nowadays, development of an improved compliance tester which is free of the above-mentioned drawbacks has been eagerly required.